A security personnel member stands guard outside a burnt carriage of a train near a railway station in New Delhi, India, August 26, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

PANCHKULA, India (Reuters) - Indian authorities have arrested hundreds of people and cancelled more than 300 trains passing through two northern states after at least 29 people were killed in violent protests following the conviction of a self-styled ‘godman’.

Security forces were on “standby” outside the spiritual leader’s headquarters where some 10,000 followers remained holed up, the Director General of Police in Haryana state, Baljit Singh Sandhu, told India Today news station.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the head of a social welfare and spiritual group with a wide following in Punjab and Haryana states, was found guilty on Friday of raping two followers in a case dating back to 2002 at the headquarters of his Dera Sacha Sauda group in the northern town of Sirsa.

Supporters rampaged in response, attacking railway stations, petrol stations and television vans in towns across the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, witnesses said.

At least 29 people were killed in Panchkula town where the court returned its verdict on Singh and more than 200 people were injured, mainly in Haryana state.

The protests, about 250 km (155 miles) from the Indian capital New Delhi, was one of the biggest this year related to a ‘godman’ spiritual leader.